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When I finally came, it wasbliss; relief and energy pouring out of me and leaving me well and truly satiated, even if the sight of my king’s reddened and abused lips made me wish we could fit in a second round of morning sex before his meeting with his Council.
I released his hair, smoothing it back down flat, and Ren’s eyes narrowed as he swallowed his mouthful down.
“You fucker.”
“Sorry,” I said with a grin. I really wasn’t. “I must have been too out of it to hear a single thing you were saying.”
“Oh, you heard me,” rasped Ren, and he clambered to his feet with shaky legs. “You’re just looking for a night of agony at my hands, aren’t you?”
“I have plans tonight,” I said airily, enjoying the incensed expression that crossed my husband’s face.
“Yes, consort, youdo. Plans that involve being strung up by your fucking wrists and me turning your ass an exquisite rainbow of colours.”
“Except it was only my hand that moved,” I pointed out, deftly dodging his attempt to grab me and heading to the bathing chamber so I could clean myself up. “And so that’s all you’ll get to play with. Your rules, Your Majesty.”
Ren laughed, low and dark. “I felt your hips thrusting, you prick. That ass of yours ismine.”
“It’s yours,” I agreed, one hand resting on the doorframe as I glanced affectionately back at him. “Always yours.”
*
Chapter Four
“That one, with the darker vellum,” Ren said, jerking his chin at the desk where rolls of parchment and books littered its surface. I pushed some aside to find the scroll he’d indicated, not bothering to unroll it and take a nosy peek before I passed it over to him where he was still being dressed by Camila. It was rare that any of the king’s notes made sense: regardless of his atrociously ornate handwriting, the man had been doing this sort of work for so long that he’d developed his own kind of shorthand that was utterly incomprehensible to anyone but him, even when it wasn’t formally encoded.
I’d once asked him to clarify some of it for me. I’d made it through the detailed explanation of why ‘winter’ was signified by a circle – becausewhen it’s here, winter feels like it will never end, obviously– and up to the colour ‘green’ being represented by a dozen tiny and detailed shapes that were apparently a bushel of grapes...despite the actual word for green,verde,being a hundred times quicker to write down. At that point, I couldn’t decide if my husband was just fucking with me, or that was genuinely the way his mind worked.
Ren gave a long sigh as he ran his eyes across the unfurled page while Camila tied a silver scarf around his neck and began to lace up his corset. It was one of my favourite outfits of his: black silk with burgundy brocade that tightly cinched his waist and made him look even more mouth-wateringly edible than usual.
Yet I wasn’t going to give Ren the satisfaction of openly admiring him in it, and I knew better than to make any disparaging comments, either: the last time I’d done so with this particular ensemble, Ren had tied my hands behind my back and made me undress him with my teeth. There were so many bloody laces to undo that my jaw had ached by the time I was done, not that he’d cared. In fact, I distinctly recalled how he’d made my jaw hurt far worse by the time he was done with me.
So I was trying to pretend I wasn’t staring at him, only made possible by the fact that he was clearly distracted by whatever he was reading.
“Darling?” I asked softly from where I was half-assing the laces on my own shirt, watching Ren’s brow crease.
He sighed and released the bottom edge of the vellum, letting it flick back into a curled scroll. “You recall that Lukia advised they would be sending delegates to Quareh to discuss…certainissuesthey have with us?”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to scowl. “The nerve of it, when it was one of their dukes who abused your sister, stole your throne, and tried to have you killed. Shouldn’t we be taking upourissues withthem?”
Ren gave me a rueful smile. “On the political stage, the gravity of the grievances is often less important than which side raises theirs first, because any counterclaim appears petty. And with everything else we had to do…unfortunately, Lukia cried foul first.” He waved the scroll.
Ah. I recognised what he held now: the other country’s list of complaints against us. A missive we’d received early in our reign: Quareh’s crowns had only just learned the shape of our heads, Ren hadn’t even selected his new Council members, and we’d barely been able to carve out time between meeting whatfelt like every single person in the country to eat and sleep, let alone execute strategic defences against a country that lay far across the ocean.
Even now, twelve months later, every day still felt like an uphill battle and we didn’t have the luxury to think about foreign politics when our own problems seemed to throttle us at every turn. A flood devastating two villages on the southern coast. A bandit raid that had resulted in fifty innocent casualties. Half of the palace’s eastern wing collapsing from recent heavy rain, the cost of its repair too steep to justify dipping into the limited treasury funds. People going hungry or ill despite our efforts to improve food production and healthcare, and how attempting to fix one problem always –always– worsened another.
My sigh matched my husband’s, long and weary. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll deal with Lukia when they finally arrive.”
“Unfortunately,mi sol,that will be tomorrow. I received word late last night that the delegation has made port to the east and is on its way here.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “After a year of sitting on their hands, now they send someone without notice?”
Ren clicked his tongue. “Hoping to catch us off guard, I’m sure. And if our capital was a coastal city, we might not have even had a day to prepare. But I’m sure we’ll have appropriate responses ready for each and every Blessed complaint by the time the delegates arrive. Murder of a well-respected Lukian duke, disregard of their marriage and property laws…and the rest of the shit in here.” He tossed the scroll back to me and I crushed it between my hands.
“Here’s a response,” I suggested. “Fuck off.”
He laughed. “I’ll keep that one in mind if I’m feeling inclined to start a diplomatic incident, Mathias. But I’m afraid it willrequire alittlemore care if we don’t wish to turn the rest of the mainland’s attention to our little island.”
“Fine. You play nice with the Lukians,” I told my husband. “I’ll be busy glowering in the background and stabbing the first fucker who dares to defend Zidhan Welzes’ actions in having you hunted down as a traitor.”
